Greetings from the B. F. Skinner Foundation,
The B. F. Skinner Foundation would like to thank you, our Operants subscribers, our individual contributors, and our Foundation donors. We are a small non-profit organization and without your help and engagement we would not exist.
Our mission statement is “Better Behavioral Science for a More Humane World”, and the B. F. Skinner Foundation works to disseminate the information that helps to achieve that goal. We do this through our community, our legacy website, our quarterly magazine Operants, our archives, and our publishing activities. Your contributions make possible the infrastructure which supports these activities. In challenging years such as 2020, your support has been especially appreciated.
This year we launched our B. F. Skinner community. This community is designed to be interactive and is a place where Skinner enthusiasts can host a group, have a discussion, or read the latest issue of Operants. The community is free and accessible publicly, however, some content requires that you provide an email to create a login. The goal of this community is to have a place where people can discuss issues with others who have similar interests in behavioral science. The community provides a way that behaviorists from different locations may engage with other similar-minded people.
The Foundation continues to publish Operants, our quarterly magazine. Operants is complementary to all subscribers and has no advertising. It is written in an informal way to be accessible and interesting to all readers. New and previous issues of Operants can be found on the B. F. Skinner website and community, and is sent electronically to all subscribers.
This year the B. F. Skinner Foundation published Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. This new edition includes a new introduction by David Palmer, Ph.D. an expert in the field. The extended edition also includes three additional articles by B. F. Skinner that cover parts of this analysis that, over subsequent years, had evolved beyond what was presented in the book: “A Lecture on Having a Poem” (1971), “The Evolution of Verbal Behavior” (1986), and “The Behavior of the Listener” (1989). They address creativity, how verbal behavior arose, and the role that listeners play in his analysis. In the next several months we plan on publishing a new edition of Behavior of Organisms, followed shortly thereafter Recent Issues in the Analysis of Behavior; which has been out of print for a number of years.
We have exciting projects on the horizon. We are currently exploring options for providing continuing education units and we will soon be hosting our first event.
This is our annual appeal letter, so here is our appeal. Please consider donating to the B. F. Skinner Foundation. We understand the economic reality of this year and acknowledge that there are many worthy causes competing for funding. We hope that you can help us with ours. You can also support us by visiting our store and purchasing a book or a Skinner 2020 tee shirt for yourself or as a gift. All proceeds support the Foundation.
Thank you for being part of our community.
Kristina Tillman
President
Julie Vargas
Chair of the Board Chief Science Officer
To see a video about the mission and work of the B. F. Skinner Foundation please click here.